Explanation of your film and dark room photography

Explanation of your film and dark room photography

The paper used for these photos is very sensitive to light so the door had to be shut and it was pitch dark however I was unable to see anything there for unable to do anything. For some reason the paper has a safe light which can be used so it does not damage the paper and this light is red. To make the image first of all I needed the negatives but they were made for me. I got the negatives and placed them in the enlarger in the compartment called the negative carrier with the one I wanted to use in the middle. This is done so the light passes through the negative and the hole underneath it going on the baseboard. At this point the paper is not there as I need to make it the correct size, focus it and perhaps change the filter I will be using. Once I had all of this set up using the height adjustment lever, focusing knob, enlarging lens and the filter drawer to make the image final I had to test it to see for how long I need to expose the paper to the light. The image you can see below is my test strip for different times it is exposed for. I went up by two seconds but I stared at 4 seconds going up to 10 seconds. After I finished exposing the images to the light I had to place them in three different chemicals and then in water to wash the chemicals off so it does not damage the photograph. I placed the test strip in developer for 60 seconds then placed them in a stop bath for 20 seconds and then in fixer for another 60 seconds then finally washed in water for about 2 minutes. While doing all of this I do not touch the paper with my hands I used tongs to handle the paper moving it from chemical to chemical, after it has been washed it is safe to touch by hand.

After I had done this I chose the time I preferred and did a final test strip as I want to see how it will look on a longer peace of paper as I can only see a small square which is exposed to the 6 seconds that I chose. Once a gain I have to drown the paper in the chemicals for the set amount of time.

The image on the left is the final test strip I made deciding the time I am exposing the paper to the light which was 6 seconds

The next step was to do a full image and not just a test strip. The image you can see below is my final image I developed which was a little too bright then expected. I wanted the image to be darker then this. This is a simple mistake as I tested the darkest part of the image and almost did not have any light parts in it so I was unable to predict this. However this proces is very interesting in how it works but it takes a very long time.